According to Finnish business daily Taloussanomat, Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) board chair Bill Gates believes that phones never will replace computers.
Small displays cannot replace big displays. This is why mobile phones cannot substitute for computers
, Gates is quoted as having said at an interview in Edinburgh.
Not knowing better than to contradict one of the world’s most significant ICT visionaries, I think Gates’ prediction either is a fallacy of definition – if a phone does replace a computer, perhaps it becomes a computer rather than a phone - or will prove downright wrong. After all, the computing power and memory capacity of mobile phones keeps rising; running e.g. spreadsheets on my Nokia 9300i would be reasonably easy, were it not for the tininess of the keyboard and display.
The same could be said, albeit to a lesser extent, about my notebook PC – I’m happy to read my mail on it while on the run, but editing large images or wading through Excel files becomes cumbersome. The solution? I place the notebook in a dock on my desk, connecting it to a full-size display, keyboard, and mouse. Now why wouldn’t we be doing the same to our mobile phones within a few years time, especially considering that almost-full-size Bluetooth keyboards already exist?
I will admit there is one breed of computers mobile phones are unlikely to replace: dedicated servers that need much higher performance and resiliency than workstations. Note that this reason has little to do with the rationale Gates offered – after all, a rack-mounted server does not need any kind of display or keyboard.
What do you think? Please post your comments!
External links:
- Bill Gates
- “Gates: Kännykät eivät syrjäytä tietokoneita” (taloussanomat.fi)
- Nokia 9300i
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